1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is to achieve a selection of a desired menu while rotationally displaying menus through an operation of rotating a rotary operation means.
The present invention is also to display a prescribed visual effect that permits a user to recognize intuitively a scroll direction and a scroll speed at the time of the selection of the menu.
The present invention further relates to a scrollbar that indicates a range of displayed menu on a display in the whole menu when it is not allowable to display the whole menu on one display, and also a present cursor position in the displayed menu on the display.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, an information processing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-196887 is known as a mobile phone system that is adapted to a selection of a menu with a rotary operation means.
In this information processing apparatus, an icon menu display 50 containing a plurality of icons 52 to 61 placed in an annular arrangement is displayed on a display unit 9 of an upper casing 3, and a direction of a turning operation of a jog dial 13 mounted at a prescribed position of a lower casing 4 and being capable of being turned clockwise or counterclockwise is matched, on the icon menu display 50, to a moving direction of a prescribed cursor indicating an arbitrary icon having been selected among the plurality of icons 51 to 62 with the jog dial 13, whereby an erroneous operation on the jog dial 13 is prevented to ensure that an enhanced operability at the time of the selection of the icon is attained.
By the way, a scrollbar display control device disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 11-110181 is conventionally known.
This scrollbar display control device is to display, at a position of display data to the whole document data on a scrollbar, a first scroll box 23 of a height corresponding to a ratio (B/A) of a display data volume (B) to the whole document data volume (A) and a second scrollbar 24 of a fixed height predetermined such that an operation with a mouse is easily performed. Then, when the ratio (B/A) is small and the first scroll box is of a small height, dragging of a second scroll box is performed to ensure that an enhanced operability at the time of the dragging with the mouse is attained.
[Patent Document 1]
    Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-196867 (Pages 4 to 6 and FIGS. 1 to 6)[Patent Document 2]    Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 11-110181 (Pages 3 to 4 and FIG. 2)
However, in the conventional mobile phone system, a menu of a hierarchical structure is completely separated for each hierarchy, so that when a menu of a first group of a second hierarchy is selected by mistake, for instance, a reselection of a menu of a second group of the second hierarchy requires a retry of a menu selecting operation after once a return to a menu of a first hierarchy, resulting in a problem of a degraded operability.
Also, a cursor displayed in a case of selecting a menu with the conventional mobile phone system is a monotonous tool merely used to select the menu, and thus, did not allow a user to recognize a moving direction and a moving speed intuitively.
Further, the conventional scrollbar is effective in being capable of recognizing which part among all the menus is displayed on the display, but was not brought to attainment of a recognition so far as the cursor is at which position in the displayed menu on the display. Thus, the conventional scrollbar has been not suited to an operation of moving the cursor while referring to the scrollbar.